Russian student gets 19 years for plotting mosque attack. His father says officers tortured him for refusing to surrender his iPhone passcode.

The Second Western District Military Court has sentenced Dmitry Bokov, a 19-year-old student at the Russian State University for the Humanities, to 19 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack on a mosque. Ostorozhno, Novosti and Msk1 reported the sentence, citing his relatives.Bokov was convicted of undergoing training for terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of Russia’s Criminal Code), preparing to join a terrorist organization (Article 205.5), weapons offenses (Article 222), and preparing a terrorist attack (Article 205).Bokov was detained in October 2025. He was accused of attempting to join the far-right movement “White Power,” which is banned in Russia. He was later charged with preparing a terrorist attack on a mosque and illegally possessing ammunition. According to Ostorozhno, Novosti, investigators treated his attendance at a classroom session on how weapons work at Patriot Park, self-defense lessons run by the patriotic initiative Chistota, and several driving lessons at a Moscow college as terrorist training.Bokov’s relatives said the charges were based on a smartphone that did not belong to him, seized during a search. His father told Msk1 that his son refused to give the officers the passcode to his own phone. “He didn’t want to give them [the iPhone passcode], and they shocked him in the leg several times with a stun gun. He still didn’t tell them. Then they cuffed him again, this time with his hands behind his back, took out a field telephone cable, and wrapped the wires around his hands and fingers,” he said.Bokov’s relatives also said the officers asked him not to mention the torture in court, promising he would be placed under house arrest. Instead, he spent the entire period before his trial in a pretrial detention center.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.